The Battles of Saratoga were fought September 19 and October 7, 1777 over the same ground by the American Continental Army and the British Army near Saratoga, New York during the American Revolutionary War. The second battle ended with a decisive American victory, and the surrender of the British army there. The outcome greatly affected the course of the war, persuading France to enter the war as an American ally.
European colonization of North America accelerated after 1600, with England, France, Spain, and the Netherlands establishing competing settlements along the Atlantic coast, the St. Lawrence River, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mississippi Valley. The first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Virginia (1607) struggled with starvation and conflict; the Plymouth colony (1620) and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) followed. By the mid-1700s, thirteen English colonies stretched along the Atlantic seaboard, governed through a mix of royal charters, proprietary grants, and elected assemblies. The colonial economy depended on tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, rice and indigo in the Carolinas, and maritime trade in New England — all increasingly reliant on enslaved African labor after 1619. Conflict with Indigenous peoples over land was continuous, punctuated by major wars including King Philip's War (1675–1676) in New England and the Yamasee War (1715–1717) in the South. The French and Indian War (1754–1763), part of the global Seven Years' War, ended French power in North America and left Britain deeply in debt — triggering the taxation disputes that would lead to revolution.
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